The ruddy firelight shone within.
I entered: in her place
She sat; and then she started up
And met me face to face.

"My Alice!"— But her cheeks were pale,
Her look was stern and cold.
She was not wont to greet me so
In happy days of old.
I flung myself before her feet,
I bowed my heavy head;
She tore her garment from my grasp—
"Red Hugh!" was all she said.

And thus the fulness of my crime
Had earn'd its cruel meed.
Self-charged before the judgment-seat,
I told the rash red deed;
Yielding to vengeful law a life
Too bitter to be borne.
I thought, "'Tis blood for blood: I die.
Her tears may one day sanctify
The grave none else shall mourn."

They bore me to the prison
Amid the savage crowd,
And cries of "Give us Hugh— Red Hugh!'
From voices stern and loud.
The warders guarded me from blows;
They bore me swift along,
Or I had fallen on the spot
And perished 'mid the throng.

All through my weary vigils
Throughout both day and night,
The vision of the silent tarn
Was ever in my sight.
I heard the echoes give again
The shriek when Red Hugh died.
I fancied that his shadow stood
Accusing at my side.

My span of life grew shorter
With every sinking sun.
I wearied till the night had past,
Yet fear'd when it was done.
One day into my cell she came,
My Alice— and I ween
Her tears of sorrow sweeter were
Than all her love had been.

Then rose the fatal morning.
I heard the workmen go
And rear the heavy beams on high
With many a sounding blow.
I heard the sullen murmur
Of voices in the town,
And knew that I should never see
Another sun o'er Ferndale lea
In crimson rays go down.

A still, blood-eager multitude
Stood round the awful thing,
Glimmering, a dreadful skeleton,
In the misty morn of spring.
I looked upon the faces
That came to see me die—
Refreshing odours from the fields
Were wafted through the sky.

One dreadful face enchained my glance:
It gloated on my plight,
And seem'd to love the deathly scene,
And linger o'er the sight.
I saw it pressing nearer,
Haply for freer view.
I watched it. Then a sudden thrill:
"'Tis Hugh!" I cried— "Red Hugh!"

A start— a break— a murmur!
I see it from my place.
A hundred eyes are gathered
On the sullen, startled face.
A hundred hands outreaching,
Thrust him from where he stood.
The wondering masses onward roll,
Bearing Red Hugh. 'Tis done. My soul
Is innocent of blood.

They told me, when my swoon was past,
The tale that he confess'd:
How half dead from the tarn he crept,
A purpose in his breast
To hide himself from sight, and leave
Blood-guilt upon my head;
Until the morn he came elate
To view me borne unto my fate
Betrayed him; for his heart of hate
Hunger'd to see me dead.

What boots it that I tell you more?
For here my story ends,
Here 'mid the leaves of Ferndale
And troops of ancient friends,
And Time has washed the stain of blood
From my dark web of life:
One silver strand runs in the woof,
For Alice is my wife.

IN THE AIR.

WE finished the paper, On the Wing, in our
last number with this sentence: "Flight
consists of two things— buoyancy and waftage:
and without saying that wings have nothing
to do with buoyancy, and lightness nothing to
do with waftage, it may be submitted that buoyancy
(like that of a balloon) depends on gaseous
structure, and waftage on the mechanism of
wings; flying being the combination of the two
as guided by the instinct or will of a bird." Upon
this text we would preach a little longer:

What are the gases which give buoyancy?
How much are they lighter than the air? By
dissecting flying animals under water, the
presence of the gases in their bones and bags and
cells is easily detected. No chemist, as far as
I know, has ever caught and analysed these
gases, to ascertain either their nature or their
weight. This would be worth doing by some
chemical members of a London or Paris flying
society. But guesses sufficiently near the truth
for my argument may be made after considering
what is known respecting the gases of the
breath and the blood.

Oxygen forms twenty-one of every hundred
parts of the air, the proportion being pretty
much the same everywhere, in towns and on
mountains, only rather less in populous cities
than in forests. All sorts of tiny things float
in the air. The controversy which has been
kept up with vivacity of late years on the
Continent, respecting spontaneous generation, has
caused much attention to be given to the bodies